the boys look at. And years later she had lain in bed with her new
husband on hot summer nights, knowing a decision had to be
made, knowing the clock was ticking, the cigarette butt was
smoldering, and she remembered making the decision, not telling
him out loud because about some things you could be silent.
Her head itched. She scratched it. Black flecks came swirling down
past her face. On the Crown Vic's instrument panel the
speedometer froze at sixteen thousand feet and then blew out, but
Bill appeared not to notice.
Here came a mailbox with a Grateful Dead sticker pasted on the
front; here came a little black dog with its head down, trotting
busily, and God how her head itched, black flakes drifting in the
air like fallout and Mother Teresa's face looking out of one of
them.
'Mother of Mary Charities Help the Florida Hungry-Won't You
Help Us?'
Floyd What's that over there? Oh shit
She has time to see something big. And to read the word 'Delta.'
'Bill? Bill?'
His reply, clear enough but nevertheless coming from around the
rim of the universe: 'Christ, honey, what's in your hair?'
She plucked the charred remnant of Mother Teresa's face from her
hair and held it out to him, the older version of the man she had
married, the secretary fucking man she had married, the man who
had nonetheless rescued her from people who thought that you
could live forever in paradise if you only lit enough candles and
wore the blue blazer and stuck to the approved skipping rhymes -
Lying there with this man one hot summer night while the drug
deals went on upstairs and Iron Butterfly sang 'In-A-Gadda-Da-
Vida' for the nine-billionth time, she had asked what he thought
you got, you know, after. When your part in the show is over. He
had taken her in his arms and held her, down the beach she had
heard the jangle-jingle of the mid-way and the bang of the Dodgem
cars and Bill - Bill's glasses were melted to his face.
One eye bulged out of its socket. His mouth was a bloodhole. In
the trees a bird was crying, a bird was screaming, and Carol began
to scream with it, holding out the charred fragment of paper with
Mother Teresa's picture on it, screaming, watching as his cheeks
turned black and his forehead swarmed and his neck split open like
a poisoned goiter, screaming, she was screaming, somewhere Iron
Butterfly was singing 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' and she was
screaming.
'CAROL?'
It was Bill's voice, from a thousand miles away. His hand was on
her, but it was concern in his touch rather than lust.
She opened her eyes and looked around the sun-brilliant cabin of
the Lear 35, and for a moment she understood everything in the
way one understands the tremendous import of a dream upon the
first moment of waking. She remembered asking him what he
